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In the last week we've seen a horse-related project attempt to take off, a project that had the most brutal amount of autism you can find. And even worse, it's potentially not even real. Our Opinion skepticism writers have been chomping at the bit to delve into the madness and mystery that is the brony dating-sim project.

Grab the most awful OCs you can find, add a low-tier programmer, a bunch of grills, a musician, and some weird writers and you have Dark Skyes (le epic broneh dating sim). It has been the focus of a lot of discussion and controversy over the last few days, as it is as mysterious as it is terrible looking.
Let's take a little time to analyze the promotional video.

The first thing we see in the trailer is a really weird logo from a non-registered (nonexistent?) company called Psychoactive. This instantly gives us the impression that we have found the ultimate expression of condensed absurdity. Seriously though, a google search for this company or group returns jack shit. Not even a twitter or a facebook page. Notice there are no links there. If you find one let me know, I'd love to see it.

This is followed by a second group of dubious existence. When the logo finally appears on screen it seems like if it was made using a $30 Wacom tablet from 2003 by a kid with Parkinson's.

From this point shit gets weird. This feels like DeviantArt circa 2012 all over again... Remember this image it will be important later.

Oh hey, it's Squidward!

That user interface looks plain shit, did they just use Photoshop's built in styles for the buttons and add skew for perspective?

Nothing really special, I personally find this OC pretty sexy, but she looks too much like Cadance (sp?).

Squidward is here again, and he looks pretty mad, maybe he wants our money (I assume none of you will give any money to this, that would be bad).

Here we have a programmer, one of my kind.

Or not.

I am a professional programmer and I must say that's not how a programmer's desk looks like.

Where are the Doritos and the mess? He isn't even using a mechanical keyboard! For reference, this is what a programmer's desk looks like:

Picture too dark? Exactly.

Let's continue, ugly girl that is also an awful VA appeared, she tries to be sexy and fails miserably at it. I actually vomited a little. Hold on while I clean the bile off of my keyboard.

Okay we're back, surely it can't get worse-OH LORDY.

Apparently we had not even seen its final form, behold the apex of edge by a minimal-tier artist.

Do you hear that? Dubstep in the background. This indicates that this pony is supposed to be "the bad girl", she instead causes me a negative boner.

The rest of the video is pure bullshit, filled with promises that will never be kept in all likelihood. They even said the game is "95% complete", and in reality there is a 95% chance that it isn't anywhere close. Seriously, all of the UI screenshots seem shooped, the voice acting is gross, 99.9% of the OCs are even worse.

And the big question, what do they need $7k for, if they have "completed 95% of the game"?

This smells of two things, terrible game or crock of shit. Neither option is worth the money.

Deep RPG elements? What does that even mean? Really, what has an RPG got to do with a dating sim? Dating sims don't usually have battles or anything of the sort...unless they mean the OTHER kind of role-playing. But not likely. This shit is rated PG-13. The post says "spells" and "weapons"...but we see no images or video of it. How would that even work in something text-based like a dating-sim?

Now let's check this:

Then this:

The UI might look the same, but it looks definitely like if it was made with Photoshop's default styles, and also as you can see the drop shadow from the button changes from one screen to the other, even the size of the number in the heart does. As for the background, in one is something drawn, and in the other one is a real life photograph, you might also want to check out that the pony on the first pic is using a desk in a library, like in the middle of it. All of this is very strange, and definitely not in a good sense.

We should probably mention that some of the ponies are recolors of commissions one of the game's artists drew for somebody else.

"Contest prize for

It's the ponification of her dragon character

Remember that art way up the post that I said felt like DeviantArt? Oh that's because it is.

HorseNews has received this screencap in our inbox from an anonymous source. We cannot confirm it's legitimacy at this time

Latest Update: Reddit users claiming to be associated with the project have promised a playable demo "soon this week" to prove their legitimacy. One user points out how strange it is that it would take a week to produce a demo for a game that is already "95% done".

Comments (20)

Well, it looks like it's about half-way there with 26 days left to go. I've done a Kickstarter in my day, and if this project is only a 30-day campaign, then it's easily on track to becoming a real thing.

Apparently the whole thing is being orchestrated by some group called the MDE. Apparently they're some sort of comedy troupe/trolling group.

Apparently this guy, Sam, apparently the founder of the MDE, came up with the idea to troll some bronies back in December based on a facebook that has since been deleted I believe. Few months later and we have this game. Apparently him and Michael, the guy supposedly in charge of the project, are both members or some shit, along with some of the other people involved. Michael paid Sam around $300 to do the UI work on the game, proving that I guess they are or were trying to release something. Sam decided to troll Michael I take it and try and get his kickstarted shut down, so that he could take his money and run. My guess is, everyone in the project, including the artist, are all involved in the scam, and that Michael is paying them some good money to help him on it((of course Michael is getting most of the money out of it))

Just a reminder that Sam and the MDE have pulled stuff like this in the past as well.

One more thing of note that should be taken. Apparently, Michael got divorced back in October. If that doesn't scream I need money then I don't know what does.

/mlp/ has all but confirmed that every single member of the project has at one point in time been involved with MDE. The only one were not certain about is Pukey Chan, the girl doing art for the game. We don't know yet if she is involved in the scam, or that she is completely unaware of what's going on.

Also you know that brown pony with flowers in her hair? She's someone's ponysona and they had commissioned Pyoo-ke-pony to draw her. This is a bunch of art of said ponysona: http://wandering-heartbeat.deviantart.com/gallery/46101088and if you notice, the commish by Pyoo-kee-pony is there too.Does she know that her ponysona is being used here?

Okay I'd like to add something to my previous comment here... actually multiple ponies shown in the video and other advertising pics are commissions... this is in the "if we reach 7,500+" part: http://fav.me/d6za3u5And these are in the video:http://fav.me/d6m50pqhttp://fav.me/d5kq30xDo these people know that their OCs are being used?